Love

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 7 of 184 · 20 per page

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  “You just have to send me postcards,” he said. “You have to be a postcard Indian. You have to send me postcards from everywhere in the world.” Well, I don’t think I ever sent one postcard to Randy J. Peone. But I wrote a novel about him. And I’ve discovered that millions of people love the fictional version of Randy. Randy, I don’t know if you knew how important Rowdy has become to people. And I never told you how important you have always been to me. We didn’t talk about things like that. We didn’t talk about us. But I do know some good things. I am a storyteller because you listened to me. I am alive because you lived. And, like I said earlier, I don’t believe in magic. I don’t believe in God, either. But I thank God anyway for you. I thank God you stepped into that sixth-grade classroom and asked me my name. Dear Randy J. Peone, dear Rowdy, I love you so much. And I will miss you forever. Personal Photos from Sherman [image "A photograph of Sherman and his siblings Arnold, Kim and Arlene surrounding their father." file=image_rsrc4TH.jpg] Arnold, my big brother; my younger sisters, twins Kim and Arlene; and me piling on my father, Sherman Alexie Sr. It was taken by my mother in 1971 in our nineteenth-century house on the Spokane Indian Reservation. At this point, we lived in our one-bedroom house with our big sister, Mary; my father’s grandmother Lizzie and his great-uncle Stubby; and five adult cousins, Johnny, Tinker, Bill, Eugene, and Sam. [image "Sherman, Arnold and their father pose with raised fists, all shirtless." file=image_rsrc4TJ.jpg] Me, my big brother, and my father pretending to be Bruce Lee. It was taken by my mother in 1975 in our house constructed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. My father had just returned from a ten-day drinking binge, and we were happy to have him home. [image "Arnold jumps to shoot a basketball while another player defends. Other players and spectators are visible in the background." file=image_rsrc4TK.jpg] Reardan High School Annual, 1985 This is me, six feet two inches and 145 pounds, hitting a jumper against Harrington High School during my senior year. We were an undersized and underdog team that year but won our district playoffs by defeating Ritzville and Davenport, who finished second and third in the Class B state tournament. We lost our two games in the state tourney, and I still have nightmares about those losses. [image "The late Randy J. Peone sitting at a desk holding a phone with papers and a wall with drawings behind them" file=image_rsrc4TM.jpg] Springdale High School Annual, 1985 The late Randy J. Peone, my childhood best friend and the inspiration for Rowdy. I will miss him forever.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  But by the grace of God I am what I am; and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me."376 This confession contains, in epitome, the whole meaning of his life and work. The idea of justification by the free grace of God in Christ through a living faith which makes Christ and his merits our own and leads to consecration and holiness, is the central idea of Paul’s Epistles. His whole theology, doctrinal, ethical, and practical, lies, like a germ, in his conversion; but it was actually developed by a sharp conflict with Judaizing teachers who continued to trust in the law for righteousness and salvation, and thus virtually frustrated the grace of God and made Christ’s death unnecessary and fruitless. Although Paul broke radically with Judaism and opposed the Pharisaical notion of legal righteousness at every step and with all his might, he was far from opposing the Old Testament or the Jewish people. Herein he shows his great wisdom and moderation, and his infinite superiority over Marcion and other ultra- and pseudo-Pauline reformers. He now expounded the Scriptures as a direct preparation for the gospel, the law as a schoolmaster leading to Christ, Abraham as the father of the faithful. And as to his countrymen after the flesh, he loved them more than ever before. Filled with the amazing love of Christ who had pardoned him, "the chief of sinners," he was ready for the greatest possible sacrifice if thereby he might save them. His startling language in the ninth chapter of the Romans is not rhetorical exaggeration, but the genuine expression of that heroic self-denial and devotion which animated Moses, and which culminated in the sacrifice of the eternal Son of God on the cross of Calvary.377 Paul’s conversion was at the same time his call to the apostleship, not indeed to a place among the Twelve (for the vacancy of Judas was filled), but to the independent apostleship of the Gentiles.378 Then followed an uninterrupted activity of more than a quarter of a century, which for interest and for permanent and ever-growing usefulness has no parallel in the annals of history, and affords an unanswerable proof of the sincerity of his conversion and the truth of Christianity.379 Analogous Conversions. God deals with men according to their peculiar character and condition. As in Elijah’s vision on Mount Horeb, God appears now in the mighty rushing wind that uproots the trees, now in the earthquake that rends the rocks, now in the consuming fire, now in the still small voice. Some are suddenly converted, and can remember the place and hour; others are gradually and imperceptibly changed in spirit and conduct; still others grow up unconsciously in the Christian faith from the mother’s knee and the baptismal font.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Though unseen, he is loved beyond all human beings. I see Thee not, I hear Thee not, Yet art Thou oft with me; And earth hath ne’er so dear a spot, As when I meet with Thee." Jesus no doubt accommodated himself in dress and general appearance to the customs of his age and people, and avoided all ostentation. He probably passed unnoticed through busy crowds. But to the closer observer he must have revealed a spiritual beauty and an overawing majesty in his countenance and personal bearing. This helps to explain the readiness with which the disciples, forsaking all things, followed him in boundless reverence and devotion. He had not the physiognomy of a sinner. He had more than the physiognomy of a saint. He reflected from his eyes and countenance the serene peace and celestial purity of a sinless soul in blessed harmony with God. His presence commanded reverence, confidence and affection. In the absence of authentic representation, Christian art in its irrepressible desire to exhibit in visible form the fairest among the children of men, was left to its own imperfect conception of ideal beauty. The church under persecution in the first three centuries, was averse to pictorial representations of Christ, and associated with him in his state of humiliation (but not in his state of exaltation) the idea of uncomeliness, taking too literally the prophetic description of the suffering Messiah in the twenty-second Psalm and the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. The victorious church after Constantine, starting from the Messianic picture in the forty-fifth Psalm and the Song of Solomon, saw the same Lord in heavenly glory, "fairer than the children of men" and "altogether lovely." Yet the difference was not so great as it is sometimes represented. For even the ante-Nicene fathers (especially Clement of Alexandria), besides expressly distinguishing between the first appearance of Christ in lowliness and humility, and his second appearance in glory and, majesty, did not mean to deny to the Saviour even in the days of his flesh a higher order of spiritual beauty, "the glory of the only-begotten of the Father full of grace and truth," which shone through the veil of his humanity, and which at times, as on the mount of transfiguration, anticipated his future glory. "Certainly," says Jerome, "a flame of fire and starry brightness flashed from his eye, and the majesty of the God head shone in his face." The earliest pictures of Christ, in the Catacombs, are purely symbolic, and represent him under the figures of the Lamb, the good Shepherd, the Fish. The last has reference to the Greek word Ichthys, which contains the initials of the words jIhsou'" Cristov" Qeou' JUio;" Swth;r. "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour." Real pictures of Christ in the early church would have been an offence to the Jewish, and a temptation and snare to the heathen converts.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Without the least disposition to detract from the merits of my numerous predecessors, to several of whom I feel deeply indebted, I have reason to hope that this new attempt at a historical reproduction of ancient Christianity will meet a want in our theological literature and commend itself, both by its spirit and method, and by presenting with the author’s own labors the results of the latest German and English research, to therespectful attention of the American student. Having no sectarian ends to serve, I have confined myself to the duty of a witness—to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; always remembering, however, that history has a soul as well as a body, and that the ruling ideas and general principles must be represented no less than the outward facts and dates. A church history without the life of Christ glowing through its pages could give us at best only the picture of a temple stately and imposing from without, but vacant and dreary within, a mummy in praying posture perhaps and covered with trophies, but withered and unclean: such a history is not worth the trouble of writing or reading. Let the dead bury their dead; we prefer to live among the living, and to record the immortal thoughts and deeds of Christ in and through his people, rather than dwell upon the outer hulls, the trifling accidents and temporary scaffolding of history, or give too much prominence to Satan and his infernal tribe, whose works Christ came to destroy. The account of the apostolic period, which forms the divine-human basis of the whole structure of history, or the ever-living fountain of the unbroken stream of the church, is here necessarily short and not intended to supersede my larger work, although it presents more than a mere summary of it, and views the subject in part under new aspects. For the history of the second period, which constitutes the body of this volume, large use has been made of the new sources of information recently brought to light, such as the Syriac and Armenian Ignatius, and especially the Philosophoumena of Hippolytus. The bold and searching criticism of modern German historians as applied to the apostolic and post-apostolic literature, though often arbitrary and untenable in its results, has nevertheless done good service by removing old prejudices, placing many things in a new light, and conducing to a comprehensive and organic view of the living process and gradual growth of ancient Christianity in its distinctive character, both in its unity with, and difference from, the preceding age of the apostles and the succeeding systems of Catholicism and Protestantism. And now I commit this work to the great Head of the church with the prayer that, under his blessing, it may aid in promoting a correct knowledge of his

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  In our cessations from active pleasure, Charles framed himself one, in instructing me, as far as his own lights reached, in a great many points of life, that I was, in consequence of my no-education, perfectly ignorant of: nor did I suffer one word to fall in vain from the mouth of my lovely teacher: I hung on every syllable he uttered, and received, as oracles, all he said; whilst kisses were all the interruption I could not refuse myself the pleasure of admitting, from lips that breathed more than Arabian sweetness, I was in a little time enabled, by the progress I had made, to prove the deep regard I had paid to all that he had said to me: repeating it to him almost word for word; and to shew that I was not entirely the parrot, but that I reflected upon, that I entered into it, I joined my own comments, and asked him questions of explanation. My country accent, and the rusticity of my gait, manners, and deportment, began now sensibly to wear off: so quick was my observation, and so efficacious my desire of growing every day worthier of his heart. As to money, though, he brought me constantly all he received, it was with difficulty he even got me to give it room in my bureau; and what clothes I had, he could prevail on me to accept of on no other foot, than that of pleasing him by the greater neatness in my dress, beyond which I had no ambition. I could have made a pleasure of the greatest toil, and worked my fingers to the bone, with joy, to have supported him: guess, then, if I could harbour any idea of being burthensome to him, and this disinterested turn in me was so unaffected, so much the dictate of my heart, that Charles could not but feel it: and if he did not love me as much as I did him (which was the constant and only matter of sweet contention between us), he managed so, at least, as to give me the satisfaction of believing it impossible for man to be more tender, more true, more faithful than he was.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "'Now that I think it over, I believe that he would like to have us both together, so that we might form a kind of trinity of love and bliss.' "'And you think he tried to bring it about in that way.' "'In love and in war, every stratagem is good; and perhaps with him, as with the Jesuits, "the end justifies the means." Anyhow, forget this note completely, let it be like a mid-winter night's dream.' "Then, taking the obnoxious bit of paper, he placed it on the glowing embers; first it writhed and crackled, then a sudden flame burst forth and consumed it. An instant afterwards, it was nothing but a little, black, crumpled thing, on which tiny, fiery snakes were hastily chasing and then swallowing each other as they met. "Then came a puff from the crackling logs, and it mounted and disappeared up the chimney like a little black devil. "Naked as we were on the low couch in front of the fireplace, we clasped and hugged each other fondly. "'It seemed to threaten us before it disappeared, did it not? I hope Briancourt will never come between us.' "'We'll defy him,' said my friend, smiling; and taking hold of my phallus and of his own, he brandled them both. 'This,' said he, 'is the most efficient exorcism in Italy against the evil eye. Moreover he has doubtless forgotten both you and me by this time—nay, even the very idea of having written this note.' "'Why?' "'Because he has found out a new lover.' "'Who, the Spahi officer?' "'No, a young Arab. Anyhow we'll know who it is by the subject of the picture he is going to paint. Some time ago he was only dreaming of a pendant to the three Graces, which to him represented the mystic trinity of tribadism.' "A few days afterwards we met Briancourt in the green room of the Opera. When he saw us, he looked away and tried to shun us. I would have done the same. "'No,' said Teleny, 'let us go and speak to him and have matters out. In such things never shew the slightest fear. If you face the enemy boldly, you have already half vanquished him.' Then, going up to him and dragging me with him,—'Well,' said he, stretching out his hand, 'what has become of you? It is some days since we have seen each other.' "'Of course,' replied he, 'new friends make us forget old ones.' "'Like new pictures old ones. By the bye, what sketch have you begun?' "'Oh, something glorious!—a picture that will make a mark, if any does.' "'But what is it?' "'Jesus Christ.' "'Jesus Christ?' "'Yes, since I knew Achmet, I have been able to understand the Saviour. You would love Him, too,' added he, 'if you could see those dark, mesmeric eyes, with their long and jetty fringe.'

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Surrounded by a security fence with three-inch spikes, patrolled by armed guards, and monitored by cameras, motion detectors, infrared scanners, and a sniper’s nest at the top of a hill, the property houses about eight hundred Sea Org members, in conditions that the church describes as “ like one would find in a convent or seminary, albeit much more comfortable.” Annie resumed using her maiden name, Tidman. Although she was continuously under guard, she had fallen in love with another Sea Org member— Jim Logan, the same man who had recruited Paul Haggis into Scientology on the street corner in London, Ontario. Annie had met Logan in Happy Valley when both were on the RPF. Jim and Annie married in June 1990 and moved to Sea Org berthing near Gold Base. Logan was no longer the long-haired hippie he had been in those days; he was now middle-aged and balding, with a black moustache, but he still had those intense, playful eyes and a ready laugh. His out-sized, boisterous personality didn’t always fit well in the highly regimented life he had signed up for. In the summer of 1992, Logan was served with a “ non-enturbulation order,” which meant that he should stop stirring things up. In October, eight men came to escort him to a detention facility where troublesome staff members were confined. Logan was told that he had been declared a Suppressive Person and was going to be booted out of the Sea Org. Annie had previously confided that she was “finished” with the Sea Org and would leave if Jim was ready. He didn’t want to go then; he still hoped to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the church, but Annie made application to formally route out of the Sea Org. In a few months, if all went well, they would have a quiet reunion in Nova Scotia, where they could have children and forget the past. Annie promised him, “ They can’t make me divorce you.” But on October 8, 1992, Logan’s last day in the Sea Org, church officials told him that Annie had been ordered to disconnect from him. He was served with divorce papers, given a freeloader tab for more than $350,000, and then dropped off at the bus station with a ticket to Bangor, Maine. Several times after that, Jim and Annie were able to speak secretly. She would manage to sneak a call to him late at night, or he would have his mother call her. When Annie couldn’t wait any longer to see him, Jim bought her an open ticket from Ontario, California—the nearest airport—to Bangor. It would be waiting for her to pick up whenever she wanted. A few weeks later, Jim got a call from Annie: she was on her way. It was about five in the morning in California. She was catching a flight that stopped in Denver, then went on to Boston, where she would change planes for Bangor.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  I could not see this amiable criminal, so suddenly the first object of my love, and as suddenly of my just hate, on his knees, bedewing my hands with his tears, without relenting. He was still stark-naked, but my modesty had been already too much wounded, in essentials, to be so much shocked as I should have otherwise been with appearances only; in short, my anger ebbed so fast, and the tide of love returned so strong upon me, that I felt it a point of my own happiness to forgive him. The reproaches I made him were murmured in so soft a tone, my eyes met his with such glances, expressing more languor than resentment, that he could not but presume his forgiveness was at no desperate distance; but still he would not quit his posture of submission, till I had pronounced his pardon in form; which after the most fervent entreaties, protestations, and promises, I had not the power to withhold. On which, with the utmost marks of a fear of again offending, he ventured to kiss my lips, which I neither declined nor resented: but on my mild expostulation with him upon the barbarity of his treatment, he explained the mystery of my ruin, if not entirely to the clearance, at least much to the alleviation of his guilt, in the eyes of a judge so partial in his favour as I was grown. “It seems that the circumstance of his going down, or sinking, which in my extreme ignorance I had mistaken for something very fatal, was no other than a trick of diving, which I had not ever heard, or at least attended o, the mention of: and he was so long-breathed at it, that in the few moments in which I ran out to save him, he had not yet emerged, before I fell into the swoon, in which, as he rose, seeing me extended on the bank, his first idea was, that some young woman was upon some design of frolic or diversion with him, for he knew I could not have fallen asleep there without his having seen me before: agreebly to which notion he had ventured to approach, and finding me without sign of life, and still perplexed as he was what to think of the adventure, he took me in his arms at all hazards, and carried me into the summer-house, of which he observed the door open: there he laid me down on the couch, and tried, as he protested in good faith, by several means to bring me to myself again, till fired, as he said, beyond all bearing by the sight and touch of several parts of me, which were unguardedly exposed to him, he could no longer govern his passion; and the less, as he was not quite sure that his first idea of this swoon being a feint, was not the very truth of the case; seduced then by this flattering notion, and overcome by the present, as he styled them, super-human temptations, combined with the solitude and seeming security of the attempt, he was not enough his own master not to make it.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "I looked at him, and shuddered. So young, so beautiful, and I was thus to murder him! The vision of Antinöus as I had seen it the first time he played appeared before me. "He had tied the scarf tightly round his waist, and he was about to pass it around me. "'Come.' "The die was cast. I had not the right to accept such a sacrifice from him. "'No,' quoth I, 'let us live.' "'Live,' added he, 'and then?' "He did not speak for some moments, as if waiting for a reply to that question which had not been framed in words. In answer to his mute appeal I stretched out my hands towards him. He—as if frightened that I should escape him—hugged me tightly with all the strength of irrepressible desire. "'I love you!' he whispered, 'I love you madly! I cannot live without you any longer.' "'Nor can I,' said I, faintly; 'I have struggled against my passion in vain, and now I yield to it, not tamely, but eagerly, gladly. I am your's, Teleny! Happy to be your's, your's for ever and your's alone!' "For all answer there was a stifled hoarse cry from his innermost breast; his eyes were lighted up with a flash of fire; his craving amounted to rage; it was that of the wild beast seizing his prey; that of the lonely male finding at last a mate. Still his intense eagerness was more than that; it was also a soul issuing forth to meet another soul. It was a longing of the senses, and a mad intoxication of the brain. "Could this burning, unquenchable fire that consumed our bodies be called lust? We clung as hungrily to one another as the famished animal does when it fastens on the food it devours; and as we kissed each other with ever-increasing greed, my fingers were feeling his curly hair, or paddling the soft skin of his neck. Our legs being clasped together, his phallus, in strong erection, was rubbing against mine no less stiff and stark. We were, however, always shifting our position, so as to get every part of our bodies in as close a contact as possible; and thus feeling, clasping, hugging, kissing, and biting each other, we must have looked, on that bridge amidst the thickening fog, like two damned souls suffering eternal torment.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  These comings and goings, this grace and godlessness, have become such a part of my life that the wild colors and sounds now have become less strange and less strong; and the blacks and grays that inevitably follow are, likewise, less dark and frightening. “Beneath those stars,” Melville once said, “is a universe of gliding monsters.” But, with time, one has encountered many of the monsters, and one is increasingly less terrified of those still to be met. Although I continue to have emergences of my old summer manias, they have been gutted not only of most of their terror, but of most of their earlier indescribable beauty and glorious rush as well: sludged by time, tempered by a long string of jading experiences, and brought to their knees by medication, they now coalesce, each July, into brief, occasionally dangerous cracklings together of black moods and high passions. And then they, too, pass. One comes out of such experiences with a more surrounding sense of death, and of life. Having heard so often, and so believably, John Donne’s bell tolling softly that “Thou must die,” one turns more sharply to life, with an immediacy and appreciation that would not otherwise exist. We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this—through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication—we build these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime. One of the most difficult problems is to construct these barriers of such a height and strength that one has a true harbor, a sanctuary away from crippling turmoil and pain, but yet low enough, and permeable enough, to let in fresh seawater that will fend off the inevitable inclination toward brackishness. For someone with my cast of mind and mood, medication is an integral element of this wall: without it, I would be constantly beholden to the crushing movements of a mental sea; I would, unquestionably, be dead or insane. But love is, to me, the ultimately more extraordinary part of the breakwater wall: it helps to shut out the terror and awfulness, while, at the same time, allowing in life and beauty and vitality. When I first thought about writing this book, I conceived of it as a book about moods, and an illness of moods, in the context of an individual life. As I have written it, however, it has somehow turned out to be very much a book about love as well: love as sustainer, as renewer, and as protector. After each seeming death within my mind or heart, love has returned to re-create hope and to restore life. It has, at its best, made the inherent sadness of life bearable, and its beauty manifest. It has, inexplicably and savingly, provided not only cloak but lantern for the darker seasons and grimmer weather.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Isaac is touch. Why have I ever thought anything different? He held me once to soothe me from my nightmares, and now he is holding me to protect me from the cold. He touches right where it hurts, and then all of a sudden it doesn’t hurt. Yes, Isaac is touch. I see the pink spade again. I can feel the grit of coffee grounds as I work them between my teeth. Then I see The Great Wall of China, and I know my brain is short circuiting, passing along images of things that are in my subconscious. When I see the table flash in my mind—the carved up, heavy, wooden table from the kitchen downstairs—I feel something true. It’s like when I sleep and my brain tells me what to write. What is it about the table…? Then I see it, but I’m so tired I can’t keep my eyes open. Don’t forget, I tell myself. You have to remember the table… The fire goes. Our hearts are slowing. We are resolute. [image file=image31.jpg] I wake up. I am not dead. I push at Isaac’s chest to wake him up. He doesn’t move. His skin feels strange—cold and stiff. Oh my God. “Isaac!” I shove at him with the little bit of leverage that I have. “Isaac!” I press my ear to his chest. My hair is in my mouth, falling in my eyes. I can’t reach the pulse at his neck; I’m trapped between him and the blanket. I’m going to have an asthma attack. I can feel it coming. There’s not enough air in this blanket. All I can hear is my own frantic breathing. I have to unroll us, but he feels like a thousand pounds. I push him onto his back and struggle to get out of the blanket. Struggle to breathe as my airways constrict. I have to wiggle up and out. When I am free of the joint, the air hits me. It’s freezing. I need it in my lungs, but I don’t know how to get it there. I pull the blanket away from his face and press my fingers to his neck. I’m mumbling please over and over. Please don’t be dead. Please don’t leave me here alone. Please don’t leave me. Please don’t let me have this asthma attack right now. I can feel a pulse. It’s barely there. I roll onto my back and wheeze. It’s a terrible sound. It’s the sound of dying. Why am I always dying? I arch my back, my eyes roll. I have to help Isaac. The table! … What was it about the table?

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  At length, the tender texture of that tract giving way to such fierce tearing and rending, he pierced something further into me: and now, outrageous and no longer his own master, but borne headlong away by the fury and over-mettle of that member, now exerting itself with a kind of native rage, he breaks in, carries all before him, and one violent merciless lunge, sent it, imbrued, and reeking with virgin blood, up to the very hilt in me... Then! then all my resolution deserted me: I screamed out, and fainted away with the sharpness of the pain; and, as he told me afterwards, on his drawing out, when emission was over with him, my thighs were instantly all in a stream of blood, that flowed from the wounded torn passage. When I recovered my senses, I found myself undressed and a-bed, in the arms of the sweet relenting murderer of my virginity, who hung mourning tenderly over me, and holding in his hand a cordial, which, coming from the still dear author of so much pain, I could not refuse; my eyes, however, moistened with tears, and languishingly turned upon him, seemed to reproach him with his cruelty, and ask him, if such were the rewards of love. But Charles, to whom I was now infinitely endeared by his complete triumph over a maidenhead, where he so little expected to find one, in tenderness to that pain which he had put me to, in procuring himself the height of pleasure, smothered his exultation, and employed himself with so much sweetness, so much warmth, to sooth, to caress, and comfort me in my soft complainings, which breathed, indeed, more love than resentment, that I presently drowned all sense of pain in the pleasure of seeing him, of thinking that I belonged to him: he who was now the absolute disposer of my happiness, and, in one word, my fate.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Under the early emperors you would have been a martyr, at the time of the Reformation an anabaptist, during the French Revolution one of those inspired Girondists who mounted the guillotine with the marseillaise on their lips. But you are my slave, my—” She suddenly leaped up; the furs slipped down, and she threw her arms with soft pressure about my neck. “My beloved slave, Severin, oh, how I love you, how I adore you, how handsome you are in your Cracovian costume! You will be cold to-night up in your wretched room without a fire. Shall I give you one of my furs, dear heart, the large one there—” She quickly picked it up, throwing it over my shoulders, and before I knew what had happened I was completely wrapped up in it. “How wonderfully becoming furs are to your face, they bring out your noble lines. As soon as you cease being my slave, you must wear a velvet coat with sable, do you understand? Otherwise I shall never put on my fur-jacket again.” And again she began to caress me and kiss me; finally she drew me down on the little divan. “You seem to be pleased with yourself in furs,” she said. “Quick, quick, give them to me, or I will lose all sense of dignity.” I placed the furs about her, and Wanda slipped her right arm into the sleeve. “This is the pose in Titian’s picture. But now enough of joking. Don’t always look so solemn, it makes me feel sad. As far as the world is concerned you are still merely my servant; you are not yet my slave, for you have not yet signed the contract. You are still free, and can leave me any moment. You have played your part magnificently. I have been delighted, but aren’t you tired of it already, and don’t you think I am abominable? Well, say something—I command it.” “Must I confess to you, Wanda?” I began. “Yes, you must.” “Even if you take advantage of it,” I continued, “I shall love you the more deeply, adore you the more fanatically, the worse you treat me. What you have just done inflames my blood and intoxicates all my senses.” I held her close to me and clung for several moments to her moist lips. “Oh, you beautiful woman,” I then exclaimed, looking at her. In my enthusiasm I tore the sable from her shoulders and pressed my mouth against her neck. “You love me even when I am cruel,” said Wanda, “now go!—you bore me—don’t you hear?” She boxed my ears so that I saw stars and bells rang in my ears. “Help me into my furs, slave.”

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Our sightless eyes saw each other no more, for we fell into that divine prostration which follows shattering ecstacy. "Oblivion, however, did not follow, but we remained in a benumbed state of torpor, speechless, forgetting everything except the love we bore each other, unconscious of everything save the pleasure of feeling each other's bodies, which, however, seemed to have lost their own individuality, mingled and confounded as they were together. Apparently we had but one head and one heart, for they beat in such unison, and the same vague thoughts flitted through both our brains. "Why did not Jehovah strike us dead that moment? Had we not provoked Him enough? How was it that the jealous God was not envious of our bliss? Why did He not hurl one of His avenging thunderbolts at us, and annihilate us?" "What! and have pitched you both headlong into hell?" "Well, what then? Hell, of course, is no excelsior—no place of false aspirations after an unreachable ideal of fallacious hopes and bitter disappointments. Never pretending to be what we are not, we shall find there true contentedness of mind, and our bodies will be able to develop those faculties with which nature has endowed them. Not being either hypocrites or dissemblers, the dread of being seen such as we really are can never torment us. "If we are grossly bad, we shall at least be truthfully so. There will be amongst us that honesty which here on earth exists only amongst thieves; and moreover, we shall have that genial companionship of fellow-beings after our own heart. "Is hell, then, such a place to be dreaded? Thus, even admitting of an after-life in the bottomless pit, which I do not, hell would only be the paradise of those whom nature has created fit for it. Do animals repine for not having been created men? No, I think not. Why should we, then, make ourselves unhappy for not having been born angels? "At that moment it seemed as if we were floating somewhere between heaven and earth, not thinking that everything that has a beginning has likewise an end. "The senses were blunted, so that the downy couch upon which we were resting was like a bed of clouds. A death-like silence was reigning around us. The very noise and hum of the great city seemed to have stopped—or, at least, we did not hear it. Could the world have stopped in its rotation, and the hand of Time have arrested itself in its dismal march?

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He received baptism from Ambrose in Milan on Easter Sunday, 387, in company with his friend and fellow-convert Alypius, and his natural son Adeodatus (given by God). It impressed the divine seal upon the inward transformation. He broke radically with the world; abandoned the brilliant and lucrative vocation of a teacher of rhetoric, which he had followed in Rome and Milan; sold his goods for the benefit of the poor: and thenceforth devoted his rare gifts exclusively to the service of Christ, and to that service he continued faithful to his latest breath. After the death of his mother, whom he revered and loved with the most tender affection, he went a second time to Rome for several months, and wrote books in defence of true Christianity against false philosophy and the Manichaean heresy. Returning to Africa, he spent three years, with his friends Alypius and Evodius, on an estate in his native Tagaste, in contemplative and literary retirement. Then, in 391, he was chosen presbyter against his will, by the voice of the people, which, as in the similar cases of Cyprian and Ambrose, proved to be the voice of God, in the Numidian maritime city of Hippo Regius (now Bona); and in 395 he was elected bishop in the same city. For eight and thirty years, until his death, he labored in this place, and made it the intellectual centre of Western Christendom.2151 His outward mode of life was extremely simple, and mildly ascetic. He lived with his clergy in one house in an apostolic community of goods, and made this house a seminary of theology, out of which ten bishops and many lower clergy went forth. Females, even his sister, were excluded from his house, and could see him only in the presence of others. But he founded religious societies of women; and over one of these his sister, a saintly widow, presided.2152 He once said in a sermon, that he had nowhere found better men, and he had nowhere found worse, than in monasteries. Combining, as he did, the clerical life with the monastic, he became unwittingly the founder of the Augustinian order, which gave the reformer Luther to the world. He wore the black dress of the Eastern coenobites, with a cowl and a leathern girdle. He lived almost entirely on vegetables, and seasoned the common meal with reading or free conversation, in which it was a rule that the character of an absent person should never be touched. He had this couplet engraved on the table: "Quisquis amat dictis absentum rodere vitam, Hanc mensam vetitam noverit esse sibi."

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  When I come to, my leg is throbbing and I’m wasted. That’s what you get when you pour half a bottle of tequila in your starving stomach. He is sitting a few feet away with his back resting against the wall. His head droops down like he’s sleeping. I crane my neck trying to get a look at my leg. Isaac cleaned up most of the mess, but I can see dark spots on the floor around my body—blood. My leg is propped on a pillow, the area where the bone broke through my skin is wrapped in gauze. He’s splinted the leg between what looks like slabs of wood. I feel good about the scar it’ll leave. It’ll be long and jagged. Isaac wakes up. Once again I notice how terrible he looks. Last night I thought he was dead, and now here he is fixing me. This wasn’t right. I want to do something to make him better, but I’m lying on my back, drunk. He gets up and comes to me. He half scoots, half crawls. “You were lucky. The bone only broke in one part. It was a clean break so you didn’t have any fragments floating around. But since it tore through the skin there could be nerve and tissue damage. There was no internal bleeding that I could see.” “What about infection?” I ask. Isaac nods. “You could develop an infection in the bone. I found a bottle of penicillin. We will do what we can. The greater the damage is to the bone, soft tissues, nerves, and blood vessels, the higher the risk for infection. And since you were dragging yourself all over the house…” I lean my head back because the room is spinning. I wonder if I’ll remember any of this when the effects of the tequila clear. “It’s the best I could do,” he says. I know it is. He hands me a mug with a spoon sticking out of it. I take it, peering inside. He picks up his own mug. “What is it?” there is a lumpy looking yellow fluid in the cup. It looks disgusting, but my stomach clenches in anticipation anyway. “Creamed corn.” He sticks the spoon in his mouth, sucks it dry. I follow suit. It’s not nearly as bad as it looks. I have hazy memories of grabbing the can the night before, the way it dug into my hip as I climbed the ladder. “Take it slow,” Isaac warns. I have to force myself not to down the whole mug in one gulp. My hunger pain subsides ever so slightly, and I am able to focus solely on the other pain my body is feeling. He hands me four large white pills. “It’ll just dim it, Senna.” “Okay,” I whisper, letting him drop them in my hand. He hands me a cup of water and I drop all four pills into my mouth. “Isaac,” I say. “Please rest.” He kisses my forehead. “Hush.”

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "On the morrow I again sent word to Teleny that I could not see him, although I longed to do so; but the day after that, seeing that I did not come to him as usual, he called upon me. "Surprised at the physical and moral change which had come over me, he began to think that some mutual friend had been slandering him, so to reassure him, I—after much pressing and many questions—took out that loathsome letter which I as much dreaded to touch as if it had been a viper, and gave it to him. "Although more than myself inured to such matters, his brow grew cloudy and thoughtful, and he even went pale. Still, after pondering over over it for a moment, he began to examine the paper on which those horrible words were written; then he lifted up both card and envelope to his nose, and smelt them both. A merry expression came all at once over his face. 'I have it—I have it—you need not be afraid! They smell of attar of roses,' cried he; 'I know who it is.' "'Who?' "'Why! can't you guess?' "'The Countess?' "Teleny frowned. "'How is it you know about her?' "I told him all. When I had finished, he clasped me in his arms and kissed me again and again. "'I tried in every way to forget you, Camille, you see if I succeeded. The Countess is now miles away and we shall not see each other again.' "As he said these words my eyes fell on a very fine yellow diamond ring—a moonstone—which he wore on his little finger. "'That is a woman's ring,' said I, 'she gave it you?' "He made no answer. "'Will you wear this one in its stead?' "The ring I gave him was an antique cameo of exquisite workmanship, surrounded with brilliants, but its chief merit was that it represented the head of Antinöus. "'But,' said he, 'this is a priceless jewel;' and he looked at it closer. Then taking my head between his hands, and covering my face with kisses,—'Priceless indeed to me, for it looks like you.' "I burst out laughing. "'Why do you laugh?' said he, astonished. "'Because,' was my reply, 'the features are quite yours.' "'Perhaps then,' quoth he, 'we are alike in looks as well as in tastes. Who knows—you are, perhaps, my doppel-gänger? Then, woe to one of us!' "'Why?' "'In our country they say that a man must never meet his alter ego, it brings misfortune to one or to both;' and he shivered as he said this. Then, with a smile, 'I am superstitious, you know.' "'Anyhow,' added I, 'should any misfortune part us, let this ring, like that of the virgin queen, be your messenger. Send it to me and I swear that nothing shall keep me away from you.' "The ring was on his finger and he was in my arms. Our pledge was sealed with a kiss.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Madame de Bressac, that woman filled with piety and virtue, was not unaware her nephew justified his wild behavior with every one of the day's paradoxes; she too often shuddered upon hearing them; and as she condescended to attribute somewhat more good sense to me than to her other women, she would sometimes take me aside and speak of her chagrin. Meanwhile, her nephew, champing at the bit, had reached the point where he no longer bothered to hide his malign intentions; not only had he surrounded his aunt with all of that dangerous canaille which served his pleasures, but he had even carried boldness so far as to declare to her, in my presence, that were she to take it into her head to frustrate his appetite, he would convince her of their charm by practicing them before her very eyes. I trembled; I beheld this conduct with horror. I strove to rationalize my reactions by attributing their origin to personal motives, for I wished to stifle the unhappy passion which burned in my soul; but is love an illness to be cured? All I endeavored to oppose to it merely fanned its flames, and the perfidious Count never appeared more lovable to me than when I had assembled before me everything which ought to have induced me to hate him. I had remained four years in this household unrelentingly persecuted by the same sorrows, forever consoled by the same sweetnesses, when this abominable man, finally believing himself sure of me, dared disclose his infamous schemes. We were in the country at the time, I alone attended upon the Marquise, her first maid-in-waiting had obtained leave to remain in Paris through the summer to look after some of her husband's business. One evening shortly after I had retired, and as I was taking some air upon the balcony of my room, being unable to bring myself to go to bed because of the extreme heat, I suddenly heard the Count knock; he wished to have a word or two with me. Alas! the moments that cruel author of my ills accorded me of his presence were too precious for me to dare refuse him one; he enters, carefully closes the door and flings himself into an armchair. "Listen to me, Therese," and there is a note of embarrassment in his voice, "I have things of the greatest importance to say to you; swear to me you will never reveal any of them." "Monsieur," I reply, "do you think me capable of abusing your confidence?" "You have no idea what you would be risking - were you to prove to me I had made a mistake in trusting you!"

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  When I knelt with the coffee-tray beside her bed, Wanda suddenly placed her hand on my shoulder and her eyes plunged deep into mine. “What beautiful eyes you have,” she said softly, “and especially now since you suffer. Are you very unhappy?” I bowed my head, and kept silent. “Severin, do you still love me,” she suddenly exclaimed passionately, “can you still love me?” She drew me close with such vehemence that the coffee-tray upset, the can and cups fell to the floor, and the coffee ran over the carpet. “Wanda—my Wanda,” I cried out and held her passionately against me; I covered her mouth, face, and breast with kisses. “It is my unhappiness that I love you more and more madly the worse you treat me, the more frequently you betray me. Oh, I shall die of pain and love and jealousy.” “But I haven’t betrayed you, as yet, Severin,” replied Wanda smiling. “Not? Wanda! Don’t jest so mercilessly with me,” I cried. “Haven’t I myself taken the letter to the Prince —” “Of course, it was an invitation for luncheon.” “You have, since we have been in Florence—” “I have been absolutely faithful to you,” replied Wanda, “I swear it by all that is holy to me. All that I have done was merely to fulfill your dream and it was done for your sake. “However, I shall take a lover, otherwise things will be only half accomplished, and in the end you will yet reproach me with not having treated you cruelly enough, my dear beautiful slave! But to-day you shall be Severin again, the only one I love. I haven’t given away your clothes. They are here in the chest. Go and dress as you used to in the little Carpathian health-resort when our love was so intimate. Forget everything that has happened since; oh, you will forget it easily in my arms; I shall kiss away all your sorrows.” She began to treat me tenderly like a child, to kiss me and caress me. Finally she said with a gracious smile, “Go now and dress, I too will dress. Shall I put on my fur-jacket? Oh yes, I know, now run along!” When I returned she was standing in the center of the room in her white satin dress, and the red kazabaika edged with ermine; her hair was white with powder and over her forehead she wore a small diamond diadem. For a moment she reminded me in an uncanny way of Catherine the Second, but she did not give me much time for reminiscences. She drew me down on the ottoman beside her and we enjoyed two blissful hours.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  The tip of the frisky phallus soon found its entrance in the hospitable hole that endeavoured to give it admission. I pressed a little; the whole of the glans was engulfed. The sphincter soon gripped it in such a way that it could not come out without an effort. I thrust it slowly to prolong as much as possible the ineffable sensation that ran through every limb, to calm the quivering nerves, and to allay the heat of the blood. Another push, and half the phallus was in his body. I pulled it out half an inch, though it seemed to me a yard by the prolonged pleasure I felt. I pressed forward again, and the whole of it, down to its very root, was all swallowed up. Thus wedged, I vainly endeavoured to drive it higher up—an impossible feat, and, clasped as I was, I felt it wriggling in its sheath like a baby in its mother's womb, giving myself and him an unutterable and delightful titillation. "So keen was the bliss that overcame me, that I asked myself if some ethereal, life-giving fluid were not being poured on my head, and trickling down slowly over my quivering flesh? "Surely the rain-awakened flowers must be conscious of such a sensation during a shower, after they have been parched by the scorching rays of an estival sun. "Teleny again put his arm round me and held me tight. I gazed at myself within his eyes, he saw himself in mine. During this voluptuous, lambent feeling, we patted each other's bodies softly, our lips cleaved together and my tongue was again in his mouth. We remained in this copulation almost without stirring, for I felt that the slightest movement would provoke a copious ejaculation, and this feeling was too exquisite to be allowed to pass away so quickly. Still we could not help writhing, and we almost swooned away with delight. We were both shivering with lust, from the roots of our hair to the tips of our toes; all the flesh of our bodies kept bickering luxuriously, just as placid waters of the mere do at noontide when kissed by the sweet-scented, wanton breeze that has just deflowered the virgin rose. "Such intensity of delight could not, however, last very long; a few almost unwilling contractions of the sphincter brandle the phallus, and then the first brunt was over; I thrust in with might and main, I wallowed on him; my breath came thickly; I panted, I sighed, I groaned. The thick burning fluid was spouted out slowly and at long intervals. "As I rubbed myself against him, he underwent all the sensations I was feeling; for I was hardly drained of the last drop before I was likewise bathed with his own seething sperm. We did not kiss each other any further; our languid, half-open, lifeless lips only aspired each other's breath.